Slowly Disengaging and Coming to Terms

This morning I got a call from my dear friend and best paraprofessonal ever.  She is my soul sister.  Sister is my age, feisty, smart, caring, and dedicated. I love her.


So, she asks if we can go out to celebrate.  I asked what we were celebrating and she replied we should celebrate me coming back.  I told her that was not the case, but I have not made it official as of yet.  She was a true friend and supported me... but as her true self told me to shit or get off the pot.  She is right, of course.


She catches me up about school stuff, especially about my favorite ever student.  He was in a world of hurt all year.  Anyway, Sister says she stayed connected to him all year despite the disproval of the teacher and other paraprofessional in EBDland.  I was glad to hear that she worked her magic as often as she could throughout the year.  But it was hard on her.  Very hard on her.  Luckily she only works afternoons so could swoop in like a breath of fresh air every single day.  And she was a breath of fresh air.  Every single day.


She fills me in more about how the year went.  How fiercely she and favorite student ever hugged and cried the last day of school.  I think he knows he won't be back.  I think he knows his days in his second home are over.  I think he knows he is walking out the door alone to face whatever condition the district has in mind for him.  And it is certainly not in his best interest.  


I feel so guilty.  I wonder if things would not have gotten so bad if I had stayed.  If he could have stayed through 6th grade, just one more year, if I had stayed.  I abandoned him.  I hope he forgives me.


Or maybe I am full of delusions of grandeur and he would have been in this much trouble regardless of who was in charge of EBDland.  He has so much to deal with in his young life.  But I would have been there to love him, to provide a safe place for him, to help him work through some of it all, to help fill some of the gaping holes in his psyche.  To just be a safe place.  He needs a safe place.


And so do I.  And it is not as EBD teacher in a dysfunctional crazy making system.


But how are others coping?  Why can't I?